PowerPoint 2013: Shining a spotlight on video and audio

You want to say something, but your bullet points and graphics aren’t quite cutting it? Sometimes the best way to make your point is with video or audio clips. PowerPoint 2013 has a bunch of improvements that make video and audio easier to include in your presentation. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how we’ve brought multimedia to the PowerPoint Web App, as well as how we’ve made multimedia better in PowerPoint 2013.

Video and audio playback in the web app

You asked for it, and we delivered. Many of you loved our first version of the PowerPoint Web App, but you wanted to see and hear the video and audio in your presentations. We’re happy to tell you that the PowerPoint Web App now supports multimedia playback!

If you’re using an HTML5-capable browser or have the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in installed, then you can now view your presentation’s multimedia in the PowerPoint Web App. The Web App also now supports playback of online Flash videos (e.g. YouTube) that you’ve inserted in PowerPoint 2010 or 2013. Want to see all this in action? Check it out in the embedded presentation below!

Making multimedia better in PowerPoint 2013

We didn’t keep the multimedia love to just the PowerPoint Web App. We also gave PowerPoint 2013 a major upgrade to its multimedia infrastructure. What does that mean for you?

Out-of-box playback support for the ubiquitous H.264 video and AAC audio codec standards

Older versions of PowerPoint previously required third-party installs to play these back.

Better, smoother playback performance of your high definition videos in slide show

Higher quality output when we optimize or compress your videos

We’ve also made it easier to find and insert online videos with a new Insert Online Video experience. If you have your video stored on SkyDrive or Facebook, you can insert them directly from PowerPoint. If you don’t have a video already, you can search through other online videos with Bing Video Search or YouTube:

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy using video and audio in your next big presentation.